Mark is an Advisor with Spinnaker Consulting Group, where he is responsible for supporting client engagements in the areas of Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, Internal Audit, AML/OFAC/Financial Crime monitoring and testing, and gap remediation. With over 30 years of operational and leadership experience, Mark brings a wealth of expertise in financial institution regulation and regulatory exam management facilitation. He is dedicated to delivering outstanding results through collaborative partnerships and effective leadership, focusing on banking, broker-dealer, and money service organizations. Mark's passion for relationship development and clear communication drives him to deliver value-added solutions for his clients.
While in the corporate environment, Mark assumed compliance and audit roles with increasing operational and leadership responsibilities. In the retail industry, he focused on branch, third-party vendor, and service center operational audits focused on enhancing efficiency, ensuring compliance, and fraud prevention. He then moved into financial services at Chicago Title and Trust, Ameriprise Financial/Ameriprise Bank, and Equity Services (National Life Insurance) where he ascended to leadership roles within the internal audit department and compliance. He designed and led operational audits covering risk management, money movement, portfolio management, investment risk, banking and insurance operations, and fraud. After obtaining his FINRA Series 7 and Series 24 licenses, he transitioned into compliance roles where he was responsible for second line-of-defense reviews and supervision, coordinated regulatory reviews, maintained and tested firm supervisory standards, conducted and reported annual supervisory firm self-assessments, created and implemented enhanced risk management processes, investigated and reported SAR/CTR issues to FINCEN, and negotiated gap resolutions directly with regulators.
In a dual Regulatory Compliance and Testing role at Charles Schwab/ Schwab Bank, as Managing Director Financial Crimes Monitoring and Testing, Mark led a team that evaluated and reported on bank and broker-dealer risk assessed operations, collaborated on remediation of regulatory gaps, provided oversight of risk and control testing, and redesigned the testing and monitoring work process to meet current regulatory standards and expectations.
Leveraging the experiences gained over 30 years in corporate work, Mark moved into consulting and has used his skills and background in roles assisting a large international EU based bank launch and train a new Know Your Client/ Enhanced Due Diligence team in Denver. He led and performed operational control validation reviews, conducted multiple AML/OFAC audits, completed validations of remediation activities required by banking regulators under MRA’s and consent orders, and evaluated the risk and control environment for some of the country’s largest banks, student loan originators, fintech firms, and international banks with operations in the USA.
Mark holds an accounting degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and has consistently honed his professional skills through various training and leadership programs. Outside of work, Mark, living in Colorado, but raised in Chicago, is passionate about outdoor activities like skiing, bicycling, off-roading, and photography. He and his wife have four successful adult children, two adopted from Lithuania. Together, they keep an ancestral "sodyba," a 200+ year-old log cabin, in a small rural Lithuanian village, where, during their stays there, they tutor several of the remaining village children in English and math.